By Joseph Berger

   When Selwyn Raab as growing up on the clamorous streets of the Lower East Side in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he learned that in the nearby neighborhood of Little Italy there was a group of men called “the Mafia,” whose scary members would sell you fun stuff like fireworks and pot.

Later in the 1960s as an education reporter writing about corrupt school-construction contracts, he was told by school officials that, if the city cracked down on the Mafia gangsters who were behind the corruption, the city would never get the fish it needed for student cafeterias. Nor would the schools’ garbage get picked up. 

 “Everywhere you looked, there was Mob involvement, and nobody was doing anything about it,” Raab said during a phone interview in September.

Award winning photographer's fascination with Egypt

By Roberta Hershenson

One of the hottest art shows  in town this winter was “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876—Now,” which closed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Feb. 17. Critic Jason Farago, writing in the New York Times, called the show “winningly eclectic” and “beautifully designed,” while referring to Ancient Egypt as “an inspiration but also a lost dream” for the Black diaspora.